


Elastic Heart

by cedarmoons



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, Sensual!Solas, smutty schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:54:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cedarmoons/pseuds/cedarmoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the DA Kinkmeme. After making love to Lavellan, Solas accidentally tells her his identity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> cough. my first DA kinkmeme entry, and also my first smut fic in like... years. i need the practice for Shatter Me, for reasons. BUT since my computer is dead and I have no access to Shatter Me's files, have this angsty smut, typed up on a library computer instead! (I'm a wild child, what can I say?)

He presses wet, open-mouthed kisses up the length of her belly, treasuring every jump in muscles underneath her skin and every hitch in her soft breaths.  
  
He had awoken from a dream more pleasant than most, with the warmth of her cheek resting over his heart and her fingertips brushing light circles over his chest. She had kissed most of the sleep from his heavy-lidded eyes and, in the predawn light, whispered,  _Make love to me, Solas_.  
  
Now, she is spread across the bed, and gloriously naked.  
  
She clutches the pillow underneath her head like a lifeline, her knuckles white in their grip. Her eyes are so dark the pupil almost swallows the iris. Her breasts rise with every breath, nipples hard in the cold morning air, but she is flushed and warm and glistening from his previous ministrations.  
  
He pauses his journey to her kiss-swollen lips to lave his tongue across a pebbled nipple. “Solas,” she whimpers, her back arching, her skin sliding sweetly against his. “Ma vhenan, please, I need you inside me.”  
  
“Hm.” He smiles against the swell of her breast and moves on to give equal treatment to her other nipple, his fingertips caressing the tender skin of her inner thigh. His index finger, already slick from her previous pleasure, circles her entrance once before sliding in without any resistance. She bites her lip, her head falling back onto the pillow and her hands scrambling to find purchase in the sheets. “Like this?”  
  
She drags her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes fluttering shut as he adds another finger into her wet heat. He had once waited a decade to see a flower bloom and die, and he will wait longer for the chance to witness the ecstasy that flits across her face as he brings her to climax one more time.  
  
“Solas,” she whimpers, barely louder than the crackling fire behind them. Her hips lift to meet his thrusting fingers, but he ignores any of her attempts to speed up his pace. “Solas, please—”  
  
She gasps when he crooks his fingers inside her, the pads of his fingertips brushing some sweet spot against her walls, and then she bites her lip to stifle her cries. “No.” He kisses the spot between her shoulder and neck, up her jaw, to press his lips against the shell of her ear. She shivers, whimpering near-inaudible streams  _yes_  and  _please_  and  _more_ , but it is not enough. “I want to hear you, ma lath,” he croons, kissing the delicate skin of her ear.  
  
All at once, he closes his lips around the tip of her ear and drives his fingers into her, pressing his thumb hard against her swollen clit. She comes again with a hoarse cry, her back arching off the bed, one hand tearing at the sheets and the other seeking purchase on his shoulder. She chants his name with a breathtaking fervency as her walls flutter around his fingers and her nails dig crescents into his shoulderblade.  
  
He guides her through the finish, and smiles when she flops boneless back onto the sheets, her chest heaving. She reaches for his straining erection, but he catches her hand and kisses the soft, tender flesh of her inner wrist. “No, vhenan. This morning is for you.”  
  
“Tease,” she says. Her voice so hoarse anyone else would think her sick with cold. He, however, can’t help but smirk. “Get inside me before I turn you over and take you myself.”  
  
“Oh? Is that a threat?” he asks, kissing the corner of her reddened mouth.   
  
“The deadliest of threats,” she replies, and he slants his mouth over hers, half-drunk on the taste of her. The sky outside is lightening with the oncoming dawn, all pinks and whites and the palest of blues. Soon, he will have to let her attend to her Inquisitor duties. But before, while he has her, he shall make the most of it.  
  
He brackets his arms on either side of her shoulders, his fingers sliding into her hair and running through the soft tresses. She lifts a trembling leg, but can’t quite hook her ankle around his hip, so he reaches down to help her.  
  
When her legs are securely wrapped around him, and the tip of his cock brushing her entrance, he kisses her again. When she breaks the kiss, meets his gaze, and nods, he enters her with one long, slow thrust.  
  
He had never been one for  _making love_. Fen’Harel had always been more suited to a quick fuck—his partners loud and fierce, each of them chasing their own release. But she is different from the others.  
  
She is precious.  
  
She is real.  
  
And in these eons of isolation, her gentle touch stayed the shadows lurking around his heart, her kind smiles welcomed him to this new world, her love burned away the strongest of his doubts. Before, had he the power, he would’ve torn this broken world down to its foundations and built Elvhenan from its ashes without a thought—and now, he hesitates, because he knows to do such a thing would devastate her.  
  
And if there is a thing he fears more than dying alone, it is dying alone and bereft of her love. She had crept up on him, had scaled his walls with her questions and smiles and small kindnesses, and now he suffers the consequence: he does not want to live in a world where she does not exist.  
  
The wet heat of her almost burns, and the feel of her walls clenching around him is enough to make his mind blank. He lowers his forehead to hers, resisting the almost all-encompassing desire to close his eyes and lose himself to the feel of her skin.  
  
He pulls himself out until only the tip of his cock is inside her, and then slides back into her with the same deliberate slowness. She makes a choked noise under him, one of her hands snaking up his neck to cradle the back of his scalp, the other digging into his shoulder. “Good?” he murmurs in her ear, with another sharp, slow thrust to the hilt.   
  
Her responding moan is breathless and high, and she takes a ragged breath before she nods. He sets his teeth on the jumping pulse at her neck, but the act only makes lust spear through him and fray his already unraveling self-control.  
  
She inhales, her thumb swiping up the length of his ear, and he can’t stop himself from releasing a growl against her throat. He reaches for her questing hand, blindly, but she grabs his hand and pulls it to the mattress beside her. Her other hand takes up its twin’s cause, stroking in firm, deliberate rubs up the length of his ear.  
  
A thousand electric kisses spark their way down his body at her touch, and if he were standing, his knees would’ve buckled. As it is, it frays the last of his tenuous self-control.  
  
With a curse, he sheathes himself once more in her wet heat, his hips snapping so hard it tears a gasp from her throat. He swallows her satisfied groan, his mouth questing over hers and his teeth rolling her bottom lip. She threads their fingers together and wraps her other arm around his waist as he plows into her, her nails scraping down his back and leaving welts in their wake.  
  
The pain awakens something new in him, something feral and desperate for the touch he’s been so long starved of. He captures her lips in another bruising kiss, lifting one of her legs higher for a deeper angle, his fingertips gripping the flesh hard enough to bruise. She breaks the kiss to release a wild keen that makes him snarl against her throat and increase his tempo until he’s rutting into her like an animal. Despite all the pleasure he’s wrung from her, she matches his pace perfectly, clenching her walls around him every time he’s buried to the hilt.  
  
It is the sweetest agony, and he can barely stand it.  
  
“Sol—” she stutters, her neck arching and her nipples rasping against his skin. “Solas, ma sa’lath, ma—vhenan’shiral, fuck,  _Solas_ —”  
  
He has heard the musical genius of Elvhenan: sweeping orchestral pieces that made gods weep, chanteuses who soothed a hundred thousand hearts with a single song. He compares such majesties to the sound of his name on her lips and finds the rest wanting.  
  
Fenhedis, but he loves her. He would give up the rest of eternity if it meant spending what time he had in her arms.  
  
She stiffens under him, gasping his name, too far gone for anything more than pleading, half-coherent whimpers, more noises than actual words. Her own climax drags him over the edge, and he whispers her name like a fervent prayer against her collarbone as he empties himself into her.  
  
The morning is still young. The dawn has passed, but sunlight spills through the stained glass and paints the bedspread a variety of colors. Splashes of blue and green and gold spill over her stomach, and he kisses each patch of color as he pulls out of her.  
  
She smiles, and he returns it, nuzzling the palm she lifts to caress his cheek. “Good morning,” she murmurs to him, and he returns the quiet greeting. She kisses him, sweet and soft and lingering, and when they part she scoots closer to him. “Ar lath ma.”  
  
Caught up in the tenderness of the moment, Solas lets his guard down, at least for the moment. He grins and brushes a sweaty strand of hair from her face, kissing the places where his fingers touched. “Ar lath ma, vhenan.”

When he settles back down on the pillows, she bites her lip, and it’s all he can do from kissing her again. She sits up and stretches, allowing him a beautiful, stained-glass-colored view of her lithe body. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get out of bed, much less walk around Skyhold all day as the Inquisitor.”  
  
“Mm.” He sits up as well and pulls her to him, wrapping his arms around her waist. He tugs her to him and rests his chin on the curve of her shoulder, tilting his head to kiss her neck. Her head rolls to the side, allowing her easier access, and his next words are spoken in-between kisses. “Then it seems my plans succeeded. I intend to keep you in this bed for the foreseeable future.”  
  
“Oh?” He can’t see her face, but he knows she’s smiling. “And I had to meet so many Orlesians today. They’ll have to be postponed. How sad. A devious trick, emma lath.”  
  
He chuckles at her quip, snorting softly at the end, and when she laughs with him it thickens the pleasurable haze even further. He could spend an eternity here in this room, basking in her warmth and her love.  _Ar lath ma,_  he thinks, smiling against her skin.He is so caught up in the warmth, in the love that threatens to suffocate him, in the knowledge that she returns his love despite the fact he deserves none of it, he does not even think before he opens his mouth.   
  
“The Dalish _do_ call me the Great Trickster, do they not, vhenan?” he asks, nuzzling her hair, and almost doesn’t notice when she stiffens in his arms.


	2. Chapter 2

For the moment, there is only silence, the sound of their breaths overlapping one another. Solas presses another kiss to her neck, and—

She twists out of his arms and rolls off the bed like a deer startled by some invisible disturbance in the forest. She grabs one of the loose sheets and rips it from the bed, wrapping the gauzy white silk around her body, and turns to face him.

He looks up, frowning, the afterglow of his release hazing his mind.

“Harellan,” she whispers, and it feels as though she’s struck him in the center of his chest, knocking all breath from his lungs.

Solas stiffens, his blood pounding in his ears and his chest hollowing out, his heart dropping to the pit of his stomach as if it was weighed down by lead. His hands fist in the sheets below him, and the struggle to keep his face expressionless is the greatest war he’s ever waged.

As the heartbeats bleed into seconds, his mind races. If he could play it off—if he didn’t have to lose her—

The color drains from her face, and he knows whatever window of opportunity he had has passed. He whispers her name, a plea, a last-ditch attempt to salvage what his foolishness has cost him, but it only seems to cement whatever thoughts are in her head.

She shakes her head and takes a step back, her knuckles tightening on the sheet that barely covers her. She glances at her desk, then at him, and before he can react she’s darting across the room, scrambling for a hidden drawer in her desk. The sheets slip down her chest, exposing a swell of her breast, and she flushes as she adjusts her covering and grabs a dagger from the hidden compartment.

“St-stay back,” she threatens, her eyes dark and wide and full of fear. “Don’t move. I’ll—I’ll use this.”

It’s laughable, that she thinks she can attack him—he _should_ be amused. He _should_ laugh at her and knock the weapon out of her hand with a flick of his wrist. He _should_ stun her and slip away from Skyhold, and weave a new addition to his plans, to make up for this setback.

What he does—because he is an old, heartsick fool—is meet her terrified gaze, and feel only longing for a chance to go back five minutes in time. For a chance to resist blurting out his greatest secret with all the casualness of discussing the weather. For a chance to keep her in his arms, warm and joyous and full of love.

She has told him several tales of the Dread Wolf. Nothing more than morality tales, in truth, but the Wolf is always despicable, every action done for his own gain. No boon of his comes without a great cost. He is a feared figure—prowling the Fade, searching for dreaming elves to snap up in his great jaws and devour.

Would she believe him, if he told her he had no intention of hurting her? Would she believe him if he confessed that she was the only thing that made sense to him in this broken world?

He does not think so. The thought devastates him, and he swallows again. “Vhenan,” he tries, his voice hoarse, and she shakes her head.

“No!” she shouts, then inhales sharply, an obvious attempt to collect herself. Her eyes are glazed over in the morning light, and his chest aches at the sight of her tears. “No. I know you, Trickster. Don’t—don’t say that word, not unless you mean it.”

“ _Vhenan_ ,” he repeats, and her expression crumbles. The blade trembles in her hand, and he thinks that if he were to place a palm over her heart, he would find her pulse racing like a hummingbird’s wings.

The distance between them is only ten feet or so, but it feels insurmountable. The urge to get up and close is so strong it makes his heart ache. _Fool_ , he thinks to himself, bitterly. _Fool, fool, fool!_

He’d known she’d react like this. He’d _known_ , and still he’d allowed a small hope to bloom in the loneliest crevices of his heart. He’d allowed himself to indulge in fantasies, to think that perhaps there was a chance she would cast aside her people’s legends and—

Her sob is small, but audible, and it snaps him out of his distraction easily. Tears roll down her cheeks and she’s bitten her lip so hard it bleeds. What had been a fine tremor in her hand is now a visible shake, and her grip on the sheet covering her naked body is white-knuckled.

“Please,” he says, words soft and wretched. “ _Please_ , my love, don’t cry.”

Her face crumples and she ducks her head, lifting the hand that holds her dagger to press against her lips. Her shoulders quake in a near silent sob. “Stop,” she whispers. She rests the dagger on the desk and lifts her free palm, covering her face. “Stop calling me that. You don’t mean it.”

On any other day, he would have respected her wishes. He would have retreated into the comforting walls of propriety and distance. It would have pained him, but he would have done it.

But he can feel her slipping through his fingers. He is not ready to give her up, not when she is his last chance for happiness, not when they had been laughing and basking in each other’s presence just _moments_ ago.

“I _do_ ,” he repeats, and even he can hear the desperation in his voice. It would be better to treat her as a skittish animal, ready to bolt at any moment, and were he a stronger man he would stay on the bed. He gets up, unconcerned with his nakedness, and crosses to her. “Ma vhenan. Ma sa’lath. Ma vhenan’ara.”

He is an arm’s length away from her when she squeezes her eyes shut and gropes for the dagger, lifting it and pressing the finely sharpened blade against the apple of his throat. “No closer, Dread Wolf,” she says, and the words break on another sniffling gasp. She opens her eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks, and—the fear is naked in her red-rimmed eyes again.

He has watched her stare down dragons and laugh, and she is afraid of _him_. He has not seen a sight so heart-wrenching since he saw Mythal’s body bleeding in her temple.

Why does everything he touch crumble to dust? Why does everything he love turn to ash?

When he swallows, his throat bobs, and he feels the blade prick his skin as sharply as the unshed tears that burn his eyes. “My heart,” he whispers. “Don’t fear me, vhenan. _Please_ , don’t fear me. It would kill me to see you so.”

She shakes her head and shudders, a hiccup interrupting her near-silent tears. “How can I not?” she asks, voice hoarse. “The legends—I thought they were simple morality tales—”

“They are.”

“They’re _not_! I didn’t believe in the gods before! But—”

“We were not gods,” he tells her, fiercely, in some vain hope that she will understand.

She continues as if he hadn’t spoken. “But if you’re real, then they’re real, which means—the legends are real. You didn’t see anything in the Fade. You were there.” Her watering eyes lift to his, and she sniffs. “You’ve lied about _everything_.”

Hearing her repeat his own thoughts back to him—she is real, she is whole, she is here—makes the breath seize in his lungs once more.

Solas wants to deny it.

He wants to deny everything.

He wants to gather her into his arms and whisper _forget_ in her ear, and then take her back to bed as if nothing had happened.

But he cannot do that to her. She has rejected him, as he feared she would, but the weight of his secret is lessened with someone else sharing it.

“Not everything,” he says instead. “Not you.”

From the moment he had left the bed, her expression had steeled itself into a wary but neutral mask—but at his words, her face falls again, and she shakes her head. The knife cuts in a fraction deeper. Solas can feel a thin trickle of blood on his throat, but it doesn’t matter. He can always heal it later, and he can feel the hesitation jumping in the muscles of her arm.

A fresh set of tears spill down her cheeks and she pins her sheet with her elbow so she can brush the tears away. Her eyes are dark and angry, even as she weeps.

“The orb is yours, isn’t it?” she asks, and he’s so startled he blinks at her. “Ancient, elven. Did you think that bedding me would get you the orb? I’d be much more willing to hand such an ancient artifact to my elven Fade expert lover than a strange apostate, right? And you got my heart in the process, too. Well done. Your trick worked! Are you proud, Fen’Harel?”

Her voice cracks on the word _proud_ , and she squeezes her eyes shut.

He has dreamed of hearing his title on her lips, but not like this. Never like this.

As tearstains shine on her cheeks in the morning light, Solas starts. She doesn’t cry because she is afraid of him. She cries because—because—

_She thinks that I used her body for my own purposes. She thinks I didn’t care about her own feelings in return._

“I’m an idiot,” she whispers, as if she can hear his thoughts. Her knuckles are white on her sheet and on her dagger’s hilt. “I’m such an idiot.”

The realization makes simultaneous disgust and horror and heartache pulse in his chest, so hard he fears his emotions will run away with him.

He recoils from her, as if the space between them has burned them. But he’s back in a moment, determination pushing away any grief. She lowers the dagger of her own volition, but he gently pulls it from her grasp and tosses it behind them.

“You are right to be angry,” he tells her, and tries to take a deep breath to steady himself. He has made this mess, and now he must fix it, however he had to. He shifts toward her and she takes a step back, hip bumping into the desk. “But I swear to you—if you believe only one thing I say—believe me when I say that you are my heart. And you always will be.”

She doesn’t believe him. He can read it in the skeptical lines furrowed between her brows, the hard, unhappy press of her mouth. He longs to lean forward and kiss her worries away—but those comforts had belonged to better days, before he had put all his plans in jeopardy in a moment of blissful weakness.

“Prove it,” she whispers. “Leave Skyhold.”


	3. Chapter 3

Truly, if she had stabbed him, it would hurt less. Solas stares at her, searching the depths of her eyes for a hint to her true emotions. She could not have changed her opinion of him so quickly, could she? She couldn’t think him a monster after the sweet morning they had shared.

The silence drags, and a bitter laugh claws its way up his throat. He turns away from her, his nose scrunching up and an angry furrow appearing between his brows. “That is your first reaction?” he asks. “Send me away, like some child to be disciplined?”

“I am protecting them from _you_ —” she starts. He turns on her, closing the short distance between them and placing his hands on either side of her hips. She jumps, biting her lip so hard it splits, and looks at him as if he expects her to turn into a wolf and maul her right there.

“Do you truly think me such a monster?” he snarls, and he wants to be angry, he wants to be furious—tears prick the corner of his eyes and he hangs his head, almost resting it on her bare shoulder.

He is angry. He is furious.

But not with her. Never her.

He is furious at himself. For deluding himself into thinking that she could ever accept him. For losing himself in half-formed fantasies of the future, and their life together. For allowing this whole affair to flourish, rather than nipping it in the bud. _It would be kinder in the long run._

She stiffens at his proximity. His fingers flex on the wood, and he knows he should push off and walk away, but he cannot bring himself to leave her. Not until he has rectified his mistake. Not until she understands.

Not until she can look at him without fear in her eyes.

“My love,” he whispers, hoarse, and she trembles. “I will not harm you, and I will not harm anyone in Skyhold. But I will not leave until Corypheus’s threat is ended. Even if you command your guards to throw me out of Skyhold, I will find a way to return. On this you cannot sway me.”

He looks up, resigned to the coldness he expects to see, but she is staring at him with an unreadable expression. “Swear it,” she says, and her voice shakes. She clears her throat and blinks her red-rimmed eyes. “Swear it on the thing you love most.”

He takes her hand and waits, but she doesn’t immediately pull it out of his grasp. He refuses to hope as he presses her palm against his heart. “I swear it on the blood of the People, and on you,” he says, and her throat bobs in a swallow.

“I will hold you to that, Fen’Harel,” she says, and he somehow finds the strength to smile.

“I’ve no doubt of it, Inquisitor,” he assures her, and releases her hand. Her fingers curl inward and then her hand pulls back to rest against her stomach. He steps away as well, and turns to pick up his trousers with a bitter taste in his mouth.

She is silent as he leaves, and he is not sure if he should be grateful or weep.

When he reaches his room, he walks by the mirror and catches his expression in the mirror. It is open and full of pain, his lips turned into an agonized frown. He tries to steel his face, struggles to regain his mask, but with his emotions at war within himself his expression only turns more wretched.

Regret, sharp and heavy, wraps its fist around his heart, already weighed down by his other guilts and burdens. She had been an indulgence, one he should not have partaken, but he had been so weak. Perhaps if he had remained aloof, her rejection would have remained an expectation and not a vain hope that his fears are simple pessimism. But he had tumbled headfirst and now there was no way to crawl out of the grave he’d dug himself.

Solas stares at himself for several long moments, until the silence becomes unbearable and, with a furious snarl, he drives his fist through the mirror.

_Fool. Did you truly think your years of hunting alone were over?_

* * *

For the past month, she has been using the long route to visit the library. He hears her voice often, listens to the peals of her laughter and preserves them in his memory, for when he has the orb and he continues with his plans.

One night, though, Dorian retires early, and Solas does not hear her footsteps accompany him. He sits in the rotunda, putting the finishing touches on the latest part of the mural, careful not to let paint drip onto the floor. He weaves the Fade into every stroke of his paintbrush, so that it will be remembered by the spirits even if the colors fade away with time, and works by light of a dying candle.

And then the door to the library opens, and he hears her footsteps pad across the floor. His brush stills, and his breath catches in his chest. He clears his throat and works as if he cannot sense her across the rotunda, watching him.

“You’ll get cricks if you stay bent over like that,” she says, and he puts the brush down.

“A worthy sacrifice, I should think, for the ultimate goal.”

He hears her walk, and her footsteps stop behind him. He can smell her shampoo at such close proximity, and he closes his eyes as he hears her kneel behind him. A fingertip rests at the center of his back, between the dip of his spine and his shoulderblades, and he stiffens.

“May I?” she asks, in a voice he has never heard from her before. It’s worn at the edges, the voice of someone who has seen too much suffering in the world, of someone who is weary of life. It is a voice he knows well, and he turns around, allowing his alarm to show naked on his face.

“What troubles you, Inquisitor?” he asks, and her shoulders slump with her sigh.

“Everything. _Everything_ , Solas.”

The sound of his name on her lips sends a secret thrill and a furtive hope through him. He examines the circles under her eyes, the listless energy in her eyes. He wipes his paintbrush on a rag and sets it on the ground, the mural forgotten.

“Adamant,” he says as he turns toward her, and it is not a question. He has missed this—speaking with her, as easy and natural as breathing. He does not need her love. So long as she does not hate him, he is content, though some part of him knows that it would be easier if she did hate him.

Perhaps then he would be more willing to continue on with his plans.

She laughs, bitterly. “The Nightmare is angry that his plan failed. Furious, actually. He’s been taking it out on me.”

Anger spikes through him, at the thought that a spirit would dare to haunt what so clearly was his—he swallows as he remembers his anger is no longer justified, and that she has never been his, never would be his. From the very first kiss, she had given herself to him willingly, and she could just as easily pull herself out of his arms.

But he does not need to hold her at night to do this one small favor for her.

“I could,” he begins, and clears his throat. “I have a solution, Inquisitor. If you are willing to consider it.”

She cocks her head, and he explains. To his infinite surprise, there is nothing but relief in her eyes when he is done. “I would like that,” she says, and bites her lip. “But…”

She trails off into silence. “But?” he prompts, tilting his head, and she flushes as she avoids meeting his gaze.

“Would it trouble you to… sleep in my bed? I don’t—I don’t want to sleep alone.” Her voice is small, but her words make his heart pound.

“You are certain?” he manages, and she nods. He watches her, but when it’s apparent she has no intention of looking at him, he lifts a finger and touches her chin, moving his head so that their gazes meet. “Nothing would please me more, Inquisitor,” he says.

She smiles at him, and the sight is so unexpected his heart trembles. “Thank you,” she says, and the sincerity of her words cut him to the bone.

 

Her room is shrouded in shadows, with only candles and the hearth to keep the darkness at bay. She sits at her vanity, already dressed for bed, running a brush through her hair. She spots him through the mirror and stands up, putting the brush down.

“Thank you for coming,” she says.

“I am happy to do this for you, Inquisitor,” he says. Does he imagine the flash of pain in her eyes? Does he imagine her soft, disappointed sigh?

He must, or else his fool heart will swell with hope. His mistakes dash and trample anything beautiful in their wake, and nothing good ever comes of them. He cannot delude himself into thinking she misses him as desperately as he does her.

“Alright, then,” she says, with another shaky sigh. She pads over to the bed and slips under the covers. Solas folds his hands behind his back and looks at the fireplace. “You can extinguish the candles, but… please leave the fireplace. It helps. When I wake up.”

He nods, and the candles are out with a single movement. He pads over to the bed, making sure she can hear every press of his feet against the stone, and gets into the bed as well. He makes no attempt to move to her, and she does the same for him.

Still, the firelight paints colors over her skin, makes her hair a black silhouette against her body. Every fiber of his soul screams for him to stop, but he cannot resist the impulse to brush some of her hair out of her face. She tenses, and his hand snatches back to his side. “Forgive me, vhenan,” he says, quietly, and he knows he apologizes for more than this new misstep. “Forgive me.”

“No,” she says, and her hand wraps around his. “No, please, it’s—it’s okay.”

He does not dare to breathe as she takes a sharp, ragged breath, and threads their fingers together. “Is it?” he manages.

He can see her smile. “It’s easier, when I think of you as ‘the man who hates tea and hides from mabaris and sets his own clothes on fire when casting spells,’ and not as ‘the giant wolf that eats elves as they dream.’ I think that part is made up, anyway.”

His laughter is his agreement, and in a fierce moment of joy he turns their hands and kisses the back of her palm. The miracle of her—he had confessed his identity as her people’s greatest adversary, and now it seemed as though she were poised to accept him. “May I hold you, my love?”

“Please,” she whispers, something rough and unnamable in her voice that reverberates through his chest into the deepest corners of his ragged heart. He laughs again and wraps his free arm around her waist, pulling her close against his chest.

Selfish, he knows, but he is too weak to resist her. He kisses the top of her head and smells her shampoo, closing his eyes tightly to preserve this moment in his memory, for later. He knows he should release her. He knows that once he lets her go, he will have to return to the task of guarding her from Nightmare.

She jolts in his arms, lifts her head to kiss him. Solas cups the back of her head and falls into her embrace with a small, needy groan, all thoughts of releasing her fleeing his mind. Void take him, but he cannot let her go. She has ensnared him with the strength of her spirit and the warmth of her smiles.

They break the kiss, and she rests her forehead against his. “I can’t trust you,” she says, and his heart falls even as he recognizes the truth of her words. She inhales, shakily, and rests a hand on his bicep, her fingers curling into his skin. “But—I’m working on it. I am. I want to go back to… what we had before.”

“As do I,” he admits, throat tight. “Selfish, I know, but to lose you...” He cannot even finish the thought.

She grins. “We can be selfish together, emma lath.”

He laughs, tucks his face into her hair, and takes a quiet moment to thank whatever listens for her. This world and its future would be very different, he knows, if the Inquisitor were another.

“Sleep, vhenan,” he says, and kisses the top of her head. “You are safe with me.”


End file.
